


Read Me

by valda



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fluff, Kylux Cantina, M/M, Mind Reading, Psychic Abilities, in which Kylo is an ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 12:57:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12190413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valda/pseuds/valda
Summary: Mind-reading is not as simple as most believe. There's more involved than making a connection and performing an uplink to your own brain. Kylo Ren is an expert, but even he must use leading questions and draw inferences to tease out the truth.And sometimes, he must demand that the truth be spoken.





	Read Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Kylux Cantina](http://kyluxcantina.tumblr.com/) prompt "thunderhead on the horizon." Also on Tumblr [here](http://cosleia.tumblr.com/post/165706534208/read-me).

It was useful to let people think he could read their minds, that he could reach in and pluck out whatever they were thinking, any knowledge they had. It kept people afraid of him. It ensured they wouldn’t cross him.

The truth, however, was more complex.

Every person, and thus every brain, was different. And Kylo could not see the raw “data”; what he saw, at least at the beginning of a probe, was the way the person remembered it. Some people remembered things visually; this was, of course, the most convenient. But some people remembered other sensations, sound and texture and temperature and taste and smell, and others remembered their emotions more than any actual details. Kylo could force these people to tap into the truth of their experience, but first he had to make sense of the metaphors of their mind so that he knew what connections to make.

With prisoners, he wasn’t always careful, because it was strain enough just finding what he needed. It would have added an extra layer of complexity to attempt to preserve the prisoner’s mind as well.

Ironically enough, the best spies, the ones who could remember numbers and names and passphrases and intricate details, were the easiest to crack. Their minds served up the information readily.

Hux was another matter. He had an excellent memory, but the way he remembered things was not straightforward; he had a set of mnemonics in his head that only made sense to him, so finding a piece of information was like roaming through a maze and randomly opening unmarked boxes. Their first time, when Hux had sat astride him, sweat-matted hair falling into his eyes as he bobbed on Kylo’s cock, and huffed out, “Can you read my mind?” Kylo had only managed to access his physical sensations before he was jerking and gasping and filling Hux’s ass with come. The second time, sitting across from each other in matching armchairs, he’d gotten a bit farther, teasing out a few images suffused with emotion. But fully, truly reading Hux’s mind was a project that would take time. Time, and knowledge. An understanding of Hux far deeper than Kylo had ever understood, well, anyone.

“Read my mind,” Hux would say, shrugging off his robe to reveal something lacy and tight, and Kylo’s arousal would mingle with Hux’s vanity, and from the look on Hux’s face Kylo knew Hux could feel him, knew that he’d plunged so deep he’d brought himself in. It was a game to Hux, and he liked to change the rules, adding distractions or giving Kylo hard limits, letting Kylo in but giving him misleading information.

It was not a game to Kylo. It was perhaps the most important work of his life.

Hux often experienced emotion in metaphors involving rain, or at least his thought patterns revealed themselves in this way to Kylo. Perhaps this was the easiest way for Kylo’s own brain to parse Hux’s thoughts. Or perhaps Hux truly was seeing a light drizzle in his mind when he was content, a torrential downpour when he was joyous.

“Read me,” Hux said. “Always read me. Never stop reading me.” Kylo could not constantly read Hux, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

As they lay together in Hux’s bed, heady after a spectacularly successful raid that had been followed by spectacularly successful sex, blankets and arms and legs tangled up, Kylo’s lips in Hux’s hair, Hux murmured, “Are you reading me? Are you reading me?”

“Always,” Kylo said, because he was.

“What am I thinking?”

It was new this time, like it was frequently new, and Kylo didn’t know. Hux’s thoughts felt like the prickle of static electricity preceding a thunderstorm; like black clouds gathering on the horizon. It was a fluttery feeling.

“You’re…excited,” he hazarded, because in truth half his interrogation skill lay in prompting his target and following a logical path based on their responses.

Hux laughed. “Very good, Ren,” he said, and he turned his face into Kylo’s chest, kissing and sucking along the skin. “What am I excited about?”

Kylo thought he sensed that Hux was thinking about him. Not a great leap, considering Hux had just enjoyed a thorough eating out courtesy of Kylo. But it might not specifically be about that. “Me,” he said confidently, as if he knew everything.

“Aren’t we egotistical,” Hux drawled. Kylo pinched him on the ass. “Ow! Fine, yes, it’s about you.” Hux raised off Kylo a bit, eyes shifting from sated to intent. “But I’m not going to tell you what it is. You have to read it. Have you read it already?”

Kylo tipped his head up to drag his nose along Hux’s cheek. “You want me to read it,” he said.

“That’s what I just said,” Hux laughed.

“No,” Kylo said. “That’s why you’re excited. You’re nervous. You want me to read it. You want me to see it in your mind so you don’t have to say it.”

Hux ducked his head back down, hiding below Kylo’s chin. “So just read it, then,” he muttered.

Kylo’s blood was singing in his veins. He, too, felt the distant thundercloud. He didn’t know what Hux wanted him to see, but he knew what he wished it was.

“No,” Kylo said. “You have to tell me.”

Hux squirmed a bit in his arms and let out a slow breath. “Can’t you just—”

“No,” Kylo repeated.

“You  _know_  what it is. I know you know.”

“Say it.”

The distant thundercloud was roiling now, growing ever darker, ever more intense, but never approaching. Kylo stroked Hux’s back silently.

Suddenly Hux pushed up off Kylo, looming over him, scowling, his eyelashes dewy. “I just wanted you to read it. Why are you doing this?”

“You’ll be happier if you say it,” Kylo said, sliding his hands down to squeeze Hux’s hips. “You know you will.”

Hux sucked in a breath that was remarkably not shuddery. He narrowed his eyes, pressed his lips together, and glared down at Kylo. Kylo wondered if his gamble had backfired, if Hux had changed his mind, if Hux hadn’t been thinking what Kylo was hoping for at all.

Then Hux blurted, “I love you, you  _asshole_ ,” and Kylo gasped because he hadn’t quite believed it, and he choked out, “I love you too,” and then the thundercloud broke and pouring rain engulfed them both.


End file.
